


Five Times Alex Got a Tattoo Instead of Using His Words and One Time Meredith Got One

by BeaRyan



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: 5+1 Things, Dirty Alex, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Generous definition of tattoo but I hate "inked", Jo and Nathan get judged by Meredith, Merlex - Freeform, References to Derek, SMUTTY SMUT, Self-Acceptance, Self-Harm, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-22 06:00:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8275339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaRyan/pseuds/BeaRyan
Summary: COMPLETE!  Told from Meredith’s first person POV. Shippy friends to lovers. Goes hard on the romance tropes. Sugared smut is in chapter six. Set early in season 13.





	1. Jailhouse

He’s out of his mind is what he is. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. I thought it couldn’t get worse than half-killing DeLuca, but now he’s proudly waving his carved arm in my face and I’m wondering if it might be time for him to see a doctor. Not me, although I’ll do what I can with this mess of cuts and dirt he says is a tattoo, but a psychiatrist. 

I dump alcohol on the open wound and don’t care it it stings. Something has to shock him out of his self-destructive spiral. 

“Hey!” he slurs and it’s only then that I realize he’s drunk. 

I ask, “Alex, what have you done?” I know it’s the same tone I use on my kids, but it feels like he’s a kid at the moment. 

I guess it’s his turn. He’s seen me act like a childish mess before. 

It’s definitely his turn. 

He says, “Used a scalpel and a pen.” I’ve made him sit down on the lid of the toilet, and he’s listing back and forth like he’s about to capsize. His smile is lopsided as he says, “Tattoo.” 

“That is not a tattoo!” 

I grab the first aid kit and wonder how a house can be so well stocked with doctors and short on medical supplies. It’s because I let the kids play doctor. Not that kind. The wrapped up like a mummy in bandages kind, which means that right now I’m trying to irrigate this mess by shoving Alex’s arm under the faucet in the sink. The basin is too small - damn him for being adult sized - so I drag him by the wrist over to the bathtub and put his arm under the tap there. He climbs in, fully clothed, and just lets the water soak his pants as it splashes over the wound he’s made in his arm. 

He doesn’t care, and it scares me. 

I don’t like being scared. 

I can freeze or I can act. Holding his arm under the water lets me do both at the same time, so we stay there with water the water on full blast, me holding him still and him letting whatever is going to happen happen.

That’s what’s been killing me. 

The passivity.

Alex doesn’t just sit back and let things happen. He can do “watchful waiting” with more patience than most doctors, but in his life he’s always played an active role. 

At least until Wilson. 

For years I’ve tried not to hate her, but I really do. I’m supposed to be happy that she calmed him down, but some days it feels like she ate his soul. He’s been slowly hollowed out by the repeated rejections. No to the engagement. No to a baby. No they can’t work together. She won’t talk about her past. They’ve just lived for years in this bizarre, free floating state. No past. No future. 

He can’t steer his life if the path he’s on isn’t going anywhere, and then she crashed the car. 

Technically I know that Alex crashed himself, but it feels like she’s the one who blew up the damn highway. He crawled out of the wreckage and he’s a whole lot worse for the wear. 

“Why?” I ask. “Why would you… carve yourself like this?” His arm is a mess of dirty cuts. Most are shallow. Some are deep enough that I’d take him in for stitches if I didn’t already know that we’re hiding this from everyone at the hospital. 

“It’s a jailhouse tattoo. I’m going to jail.” 

My heart breaks and I’m glad I’m not a crier. “You don’t know that.” 

“I deserve it.” 

He looks at me and it knocks my breath out. If he breaks I will, and then we’ll just be two soggy, sobbing messes hunkered down in a bathroom. 

“You deserve... “ I can’t finish it. Maybe he does, but maybe we all do. I can’t think of anyone who hasn’t screwed up and killed an innocent person, and they’ve usually had the best of intentions while they were ruining a life, a family. I find it hard to forgive the lazy, the weak, the fearful, the stupid. Alex did something, and it was the wrong thing, but he was trying. 

I shove reality away. “You deserve a nice tattoo. You’re a surgeon and you’re part owner of a hospital. When this heals we’ll get you a nice cover up.”

A month later I can still see the outline of the knife he carved into himself. Now I just need to make him see this mess as a starting point instead of an end.


	2. Caduceus

I’m honestly considering murdering him. At this point it would be a mercy killing. He strutting around with a giant gauze pad on his forearm with plastic wrap and tape over it and acting like it’s no big deal. He’s a surgeon for pete’s sake, even if he is stuck down in the clinic, and no one wants to see their surgeon coming at them looking like a student nurse with a MacGyver streak went rogue. 

I punch him in the shoulder and ask, “What have you done!” OK, fine, I meant to ask it and instead I accused him of it. 

“Got inked. For real this time.”

“Alex!!” I hiss. I don’t know why I even bother to keep my voice down. It’s not like everyone can’t see the the evidence of the latest Karev Experience. At least this time the bandages are on him and the only one who’ll have to suffer in the aftermath is him. 

I grab him by the shirtsleeve, drag him into the supply room and shove him up against one of the metal racks of hermetically sealed gauze pads. 

He grunts a little as his body slaps against the shelves and I can’t help but think about all the times I’ve made out in this room backed up against those shelves. Derek was a presser, not a thrower. Nathan is sweet. Attentive. Gentle. I hate to say dull, but I could go for a little hair pulling. I bet Alex is a hair puller. 

“Earth to Mer? Yell at me a little faster, would you. I’ve got to get back to the clinic.” 

I snap out of it, back to the reality where Alex is my stupid friend doing stupid things with alarming regularity. “Why, Alex? Just… Why?” 

“The shrink made me.” 

Of all the answers I expected, most of them involving profanity and instructions to mind my own business, the news that he has psychiatrist who’s a tattoo enthusiast just wasn’t on the list. 

“Explain,” I order. 

“He said I need to make peace with who I am. I’m not… I dunno… I’m not a guy named Chad or Nathan or something. I didn’t come from a McMansion and I’m not headed to one.” 

“So you got a tattoo?” 

“So I got a tattoo,” he says. 

He’s trying to be defiant about it. Trying to give me his old “suck it, world” attitude, but we’re ten years too far gone for that and I just wait him out. 

He continues, “The guys I went to high school with, they either found Jesus or drugs within a couple of years of graduation, and they got tattoos along the way. Their girlfriend’s names and then a cover up. Their kids’ names. Shitty portraits. One guy has a wolf fighting a tiger.” He leans his head back and I can see he’s wearing down. “Tigers, Mer. Because facing off against a wild tiger is real common in Iowa.”

“What did you get?” 

He tugs carefully at the edge of the bandage like he’s opening a present, and I realize he’s holding his breath. He wants this to be a good thing. Even if it’s a freaking pirate ship I’m going to have to be supportive. Damn. 

It’s as classy and art-like as a bunch of black lines shoved into his skin can be. It’s also freaking huge. Two snakes twine around the center pole in perfect balance, but they’re stylized and resemble dragons more than snakes. The wings at the top look like they belong to the kind of angel that comes armed with lightning bolts. It’s a stylized version of the caduceus, which is not actually a symbol for medicine despite the public perception of it. The correct image, the Rod of Asclepius, only has one snake. 

“It’s nice,” I say. “Nice dragons.” I exhale quickly and struggle for more words. He’s such a mess, but he’s my mess. There’s no backing out of this, so I’m going to support him through it if it kills us both. 

He says, “Do no harm but take no shit.” 

I nod like that’s the kind of attitude that helps a pediatric surgeon with a pending felony charge succeed in life. 

“I know it’s the wrong symbol, Mer. It’s not the symbol for medicine, unless you’re in one particular Army unit. It’s not what 95% of the people who glance at it think it is. But even if it’s wrong, even if it’s completely out of place, it still gets the job done.”

I say, “You’re not out of place.” 

“Yeah, I am. But it’s OK.”


	3. Zola

I walk in the front door and a wall of sound hits me. It’s “Math is Fun” rock, so I guess I’m not allowed to be publicly annoyed. Ellis and Bailey’s little voices chant along with the numbers and I feel a surge of pride that my preschoolers can count to 100. Why they can’t learn those numbers at a reasonable volume with a less annoying herd of puppets is a mystery I’ll never solve. 

I brush through the den and quickly land a kiss on their heads - Heaven forbid I brush a cheek and interrupt the rhythm of the song - then make my way to the kitchen. Zola’s homework has been pushed to the side to make way for Alex’s forearm. 

The look I give Alex would kill a lesser man, a man who hadn’t been on the receiving end of similar ones for a decade. He smirks at me and my resolve weakens a little. 

He says, “She said I looked unbalanced with just one tattoo.”

“Unbalanced?” 

He nods and the things we don’t say fly back and forth between us on a glance. 

I say, “Well you can’t stay unbalanced forever.” 

Zola lifts her pen from his skin for a minute and looks at me proudly. “Alex is getting balanced. His doctor his helping him balance his mind, and I’m helping him balance his body.”

Alex says, “We did yoga, too.” 

“Yoga and tattoos? Very balanced.” I lean back against the doorframe and cross my arms. More tattoos don’t seem like the way to bring angel spawn back, but maybe I wouldn’t even want him back. This guy at the table with Zola feels more like Old Alex. Not creepy uncle or devil spawn, but the man who divided the world into two camps: people he’d fight for and everyone else. 

It took years to earn my way out of the everyone else category.

Something crashes and breaks in the living room, and when Zola jumps at the noise she presses the ball point of her pen hard against Alex’s skin, poking through. He yells out in pain and she tears up and starts sobbing. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” 

His arm goes around her and he tugs her into his lap and rubs her back with his uninjured arm while blood begins to pool on top of the puncture wound. “It’s OK, Zo. Accidents happen. You didn’t mean to.” 

He may not quite know who he is at the moment, but I know who he’s not. He’s not his father. He’s not a monster with an unpredictable temper. He’s just a man, and he’s been actively trying to be a better one for as long as I’ve known him.


	4. Armband

I’ve been feeling restless for days, like my skin doesn’t quite fit, and I can’t figure out why. There’s something off. Something missing. 

 

I run home at lunch to make sure the stove is off and go through the mail pile. Maybe I’ve forgotten to pay a bill. There’s a piece out of place in the life I’ve built for myself and it’s nagging at me. I can’t fix it until I know what it is. 

 

I hear water running and hurry up the stairs to investigate. The kids are too young to skip school and Maggie is in an all day surgery, so either someone left it on when we left this morning, a very clean burglar is handling his business, or Alex is home in the middle of the day for some reason. 

 

Alex. 

 

Just like that a bulb goes off. He’s the piece that’s been out of place. He’s still working in the clinic, and he’s been busy with the lawyers, his psychiatrist, and getting a head start on some community service. I haven’t spent more than a few minutes with him since I don’t know when, and that’s wrong. That’s not how Alex fits in my life. He’s one of the big pieces, not one of the small ones. 

 

I round the corner at the top of the stairs and run smack into his chest, then take a step back to regain my balance. He wraps an arm around me to keep me from falling, but it makes my knees go weak and my breath catches. 

 

Crap. 

 

No. 

 

Not Alex. Not an option. 

 

“What are you doing home?” I demand. I know I’m using my mom voice, but screw it. It’s better than my horny teen voice. Teen me is an idiot. This is Alex. Alex. He’s family. I don’t swoon for him. I don’t swoon for anyone. 

 

He says, “Grabbing a shower. It’s the late day at the clinic, so I’m on from one to nine.” 

 

“It’s nearly noon! You’ve been sleeping in!” I sound like a nag and I try to reel it back in. “You should have come to the hospital. My surgery got cancelled. We could have hung out.”

 

“Residency is over, Mer. I don’t want to hang out at the hospital. Work-life balance is a thing.” 

 

“Don’t tell me about balance. Even the kids your tattoos aren’t balanced, and here you are with another one on the same arm.” 

 

My finger reaches out to touch the newest one and runs slowly over the muscles of his bicep. He’s been working out and eating right, too, in his quest to make himself a better person, and now he’s standing in front of me in a threadbare wifebeater and low hanging jeans with an armband tattoo I haven’t seen before. 

 

My brain knows this is just Alex, but my body is responding to him like he’s a drug. Like I’ve been drugged. In a way I have. My brain has fired off a barrage of chemicals designed to perpetuate the species. He’s strong and masculine, a perfect specimen for mating from an evolutionary standpoint. 

 

His voice is low as he says, “Do you like it?” 

 

My brain sends out another wave of chemicals and I can barely form words. My fingers move slowly over his skin, over the inked armband, tracing each letter. “It’s nice. Sexy.” 

 

His answer isn’t even a word. “MMmmmhmmm.” 

 

I’ve heard men make that sound before, but never Alex. Never for me. 

 

I ask, “What’s it say?” 

 

“First do no harm.” 

 

My eyes meet his, and I take a step back. “It’s good advice.” 

 

Whatever spell we were under is broken, and he takes a step back, too. “I’m trying, Mer.”

 

He grabs a towel from the linen closet, walks into the bathroom, and closes the door behind him.


	5. Bridge

There’s laughter coming from the kitchen, waves of it rolling through the doorway to greet me as I come into the house. I can hear Ellis’ high pitched giggle overlaid on Bailey and Zola’s slightly deeper sounds. Like a drum underneath it is Alex’s laugh. He’s happy, not barky or snarky or any of the other rougher shades of Alex. 

 

I just stand at the door and listen to it, the music of my life. Ten years ago I never would have guessed that it would end up like this, that this would be the most perfect moment of my day, maybe even of my month or year, but the people who make my heart beat are all happy, all at the same time. It’s a rare moment and I quietly close the front door behind me so I can enjoy it for as long as possible. It won’t last, but for now it’s perfect. 

 

As if on cue Bailey whines, “Ellis messed up my drawing.” 

 

“Things happen, kid,” Alex answers. “Gotta roll with it and try again. Here.” 

 

From where I am I can’t see what Alex handed him, but whatever it is pacifies Bailey for a moment. There’s silence where there was laughter just a minute ago, and my mom senses perk up. That much quiet usually has to be forced. When it arises on its own it’s a warning of trouble. 

 

I head for the kitchen with the vague hope that Alex has mastered homework time and all is well in the world. 

 

As if. 

 

Alex is lying face down on the kitchen floor wearing nothing but a pair of running shorts. Zola has a collection of felt tipped markers beside her - at least he learned to pick their tools a little better after last time - and is happily drawing a rainbow on his back. Ellis is merrily scribbling back and forth on his calf and the floor. Bailey is drawing stick figures on the other leg. From the sizes, colors, and clothes they’re wearing it looks like another family portrait, his favorite subject lately. I don’t care how many times he adds a dog to the picture. We aren’t getting one. 

 

From behind me I hear, “Oh my God!” Maggie’s found the earring she dropped in the car and made it inside just a few minutes behind me. The magnitude of her horror destroys any anger I might have felt at the mess Alex has let the kids make. She’s just too much sometimes. The floor, the kids and Alex can all be washed. It’s weird but harmless. Alex lifts his head and catches my eye and we trade grins. I, at least, try not to openly laugh at Maggie, but Alex mastered the obnoxious, protective, slightly deviant big brother role decades before I met him. 

 

He says to Maggie, “Are you seriously going to tell them they aren’t master artists? Better than that hack Picasso by a lot, right? I can tell who all the people in Bailey’s drawing are.” 

 

Maggie squeaks, “Not all of their… creativity… stayed on the… the canvas.” She starts listing off all that’s in need of attention in that mile a minute Maggie way, and I’m just not in the mood for it. 

 

I say to her, “Can you get Ellis and Bailey into a bath, please?” 

 

She lights up at that, and if I was a better person I’d feel guilty for manipulating her like this. She scoops up Ellis, aiming her inky side away from her body, and holds out a hand to Bailey. She has to promise bubbles to get him to move, but he does. 

 

Zola carefully puts her markers back into the box, closes the lid, then looks at me to see how much trouble she’s in. 

 

I ask, “Alex said it was OK?” 

 

“He asked us to.” 

 

“Then it’s fine. Go do your homework.” 

 

I grab the cleaning wipes from the cabinet and pop the lid, ready to attack the marks on the floor, but Alex stills my hand. 

 

He says, “I need you to draw on me, too. It’s a therapy thing.” 

 

“What kind of therapist uses Crayola?”

 

“The kind who knows that I’m thick headed and my issues go back to my jacked up childhood.”

 

He rolls over and I can see that his chest, which had been pressed to the floor, is still blank. 

 

“Use more words,” I say. 

 

“Everyone I’ve met and everything that’s been done to me has left a mark. I’m not a kid anymore. I get to choose my marks now. I pick who and what matters and how I respond to it.”

 

He swallows and I can see that this is hard for him. He’s been hurt so many times, and pushing away is always safer than pulling someone close. 

 

He says, “You’re my person, right? You matter. I pick you to be someone who gets to leave a mark, so make it a good one.”

 

“No pressure,” I say. I pick up a marker. This is a real moment for him and I have no idea what to do with it. I’m not an artist.

 

I write the date we met over his heart. It was the first day of our internship, a turning point for both of us. Sometimes I feel like we haven’t stopped spinning since. 

 

He lifts the mirror so he can see what I’ve written and smiles. 

 

“Nothing else?” he asks. “Saved my whole chest for you.” 

 

“I could add more dates that are meaningful for both of us,” I say. “But most of them suck. The day we lost George. The shooting...”

 

“Lot of raw sewage under the bridge. Draw a bridge.” 

 

I let my marker glide over his chest in an arch and inspiration hits. I draw circles on the endpoints. I add continents, turning our bridge into a flight plan. On one end, there’s the home of Zola’s birth and on the other there’s her home in Seattle with us. “Your Africa program did a lot of good. A lot. People are alive who otherwise wouldn’t be. I wouldn’t have Zola without you.” 

 

“Neither would I,” he says. “She’s a good kid.” 

 

“She loves you.” 

 

“I love her, too.” He catches my eye. “All of you, Mer. You’re my family.” 

 

I promise, “You’re our family, too.” 

 

Tears well up and I can’t take it. Alex may be in therapy for his problems processing his emotions, but, let’s be real, I could use some, too. 

 

He can’t see what I’m doing, but one hand rests on his stomach while the other works the marker slowly over his skin. Just above the waistband to his pants I write Dirty Uncle Sal in fancy cursive script. 

 

He uses the mirror to see my creation and then moves with a swiftness I don’t expect. I can feel gravity shifting as he grabs me and spins me. I land more or less gently on my back with Alex hovering over me. He’s got one of my legs hitched up over his hip, held in place by his hand, and his face is inches from mine. 

 

“So you want the Dirty Uncle Sal, do you?” he says. 

 

His breath is hot on my face and I’m overcome with the smell of Alex. The coffee we drank together an hour ago. The lotion he uses and keeps in his right coat pocket to combat the drying effects of the hand sanitizer at the hospital. The deodorant he keeps in my medicine cabinet. They’re Alex smells. I know them intimately, have for years, but they’ve never been this close. He’s never been this close. Heart to heart. Hip to hip. 

 

His voice is barely more than a whisper. “Say it, Mer. Say what you want.” 

 

My body wants all kinds of things I’m afraid to have, but it’s my heart that forms words first. I can admit to needs he already knows. I say, “Never leave me.” 

 

He’s silent. We both know it’s not a fair request, and I love him a little more for not lying to me. 

 

His forehead rests against mine and I want to rise up against him, to press our hips closer and pull his lips down to mine. The need to hold him as close as I can get him for as long as I can have him keeps growing. It almost seems inevitable now, but the path from here to there is less clear than the map I’ve drawn on his chest. 

 

There’s a wild burst of laughter and then the pounding of little feet on the stairs. Maggie calls, “Bailey come back here!” but he’s nude and free with no intention of subjecting himself to a hyper-attentive surgical toweling that leaves no crevice undried. 

 

His little form streaks past us and through the door into the dining room, and Alex and I trade one kind of intensity for another. We collapse in laughter on our marker covered kitchen floor. This is our life in all its perfect imperfection.


	6. Meredith

Just like it was any other day I hear heavy clack of his keychain as he drops his keys on the table beside the front door. Maggie puts hers in her purse, but Alex is a dropper. A stomper. A slammer. As if on cue, I hear the door close behind him about ten times harder than it needs to. 

 

“Alex!!” I scream down the stairs. I’d try to control myself if there were witnesses, but the kids are at the zoo with Maggie and I’m done holding it all in. Completely and utterly done. 

 

“What?” he yells back. 

 

“Quit screaming and get up here!”

 

He stomps up the stairs just like I knew he would and gives me that wrinkled bulldog expression when he sees me, also like I knew he would. 

 

“Nice shirt,” he says. 

 

I’m not wearing one. Just a bra. One of the nicer ones and black, but not sexy enough that I have to admit to either of us that I might have hoped it would turn out like this. “Shut up and help me.” 

 

He follows me into the bathroom, carefully avoiding stepping on the large sheets of stick on tattoos I’ve dropped everywhere. 

 

He says, “So you’ve finally lost your mind.” 

 

“You like them so much I wanted to see what the big deal is.” I gesture towards his arm, where most of the space between his armband and the caduceus has been filled, turning it into a black and white picture that my kids still love to color. 

 

He flips through some of the designs on the counter then picks up a ten inch square with wings on it and holds it up against my shoulder blade. “How much did you spend on these?” 

 

“How much did you spend on yours?” 

 

He next holds up a swooping baroque design that I threw into my online cart because it reminded me of my trip to Europe before my residency. I used to be young. I used to take big chances. Better to fail than to wonder what might have been. 

 

I take the sheet back from him. I’m not ready for it. “Help me put the wings on,” I say. 

 

The look he gives me is pure Alex, vaguely amused by my idiocy with a dash of superiority. There’s something raw in there too as he slips a finger under my bra strap to move it out of the way, and I remember that his lovers used to complain he was a jerk but no one ever complained about quality. 

 

He tugs the strap down off my shoulder and rational thought has left the building. I hear the peel of the protective layer on the sheet of tattoo paper and feel it press against my skin. All my attention is on the places Alex is touching me. He’s firm and certain as he runs the dripping washcloth over the paper and presses the water through it to my skin. 

 

If I think too hard about this I’ll feel like an idiot. I’m yet another crazy woman chasing after Alex. It’s not a club I want to be in. I think there have been hints from him that it might be possible, that we might but possible, but I can’t be sure how much of it is all in my head. The hints have felt stronger since I sent Nathan on his way for good, but I still worry that I’ve made the whole thing up. 

 

I can’t lose Alex, and I just don’t know if the risks of this procedure are worth the possible outcome. 

 

I order my pulse to slow down and tell my body to stop firing off adrenaline and dopamine every time he touches me. It’s not listening, and when he starts blowing on the design to dry it I have to suppress a shudder. 

 

The hand that was holding my shoulder steady skims down my side to rest above my navel. My back is pressed against his chest as he whispers, “Everything looks good,” in my ear. 

 

He reaches past me flips through the designs and until he finds the matching wing. We trade a series of expressions that mean “You want this?” and “Yeah, OK,” and he pulls off my other bra strap so that he can apply the tattoo. 

 

His hands are on me again and I just give into it, give into him, and move how he tells me to. He knows what he’s doing. All I have to do is trust him and everything will be fine. It’s Alex, my Alex. My person. 

 

When he’s done applying it, my hands are braced against the counter with one of his beside mine. His other holds me steady and pressed against him. He’s behind me and everything is touch and Alex. He blows on the new wing and quietly asks, “Mer, what is this?” 

 

This. This? Just me and my friend, and we’re about to cross a line we can’t uncross. 

 

The sheet of swirls he picked up earlier beside our hands on the counter and I pretend he’s talking about my internet shopping spree. “That? That’s an underboob tattoo.”

 

“So is goes here?” he asks, and his hand trails over my ribs.

 

I’m aching for him now and aching because I can’t have him. I can’t let myself have him. I’d lose him sooner or later, either because the sex ruins the friendship or he gets a better offer somewhere else or he dies. 

 

I can live without sex. He can just be my friend. 

 

There’s a catch in my voice as I say, “I don’t think that one was a good idea.”

 

His hand stills and the warm body behind me seems to turn to stone. 

 

We stand together for a few breaths and then he picks up another sheet from the pile. 

 

It’s a trail of hearts. Some broken, others faded, one burnt. 

 

“Where do these go, Mer?” 

 

“Probably on my inner thigh.” 

 

He snorts then wraps both arms around me and pulls me tightly against him, and I know we’re going to be OK. He gets me, knows that I’m a mess. He doesn’t forgive me for it, because in his mind there’s nothing to forgive. He just loves me. 

 

I say, “Get out so I can stick these on.” 

 

“I want to see the panties that match that bra.” 

 

“Alex!”

 

He crosses his arms and settles his butt on the counter to wait me out and I debate hitting him with a towel. He’s lived here off and on for years, so it’s not like he hasn’t seen a glimpse of my panties before, but really, now? I mean, he’s kind of admitting that he’s planning to go spend time thinking about my panties, and since we just backed away from that cliff it’s more than a little inappropriate. 

 

“Out,” I order.

 

He shrugs, and I know that my devil spawn has no intention of going anywhere.

 

“Fine. You want to see then you can see.” I pull off my scrub pants to reveal basic, black panties. $6 per pair at Target. They’re in decent shape and they fit well, but I look like an ad in Good Housekeeping, i.e. not hot. 

 

“If I find out you wore better lingerie for Riggs I’m going to be pissed.”

 

“Shut up.” 

 

“I don’t rate a little lace?” 

 

“I don’t know what you think went on here, but nothing went on here.” There’s no way he can know what went on here or what I had planned because even I don’t know. I grab the trail of hearts, pull off the protective plastic, and wrap it around my leg like a band then rub some water on the paper. I’m hurrying and too vigorous and the paper tears. I pull it off, pulling off half the tattoo in the process, and what I’m left with is one perfect flaming heart and a couple of scattered black lines. 

 

Alex is chuckling and biting his lip while I stand there furious and awkward. 

 

“You could offer to help,” I say. 

 

He slides off the counter and takes the washcloth from me, then kneels in front of me. He looks at me and his eyes meet mine, and the fire between us flares again. 

 

“You smell like sex,” he says. 

 

There’s no force in it when I answer, “Shut up.” 

 

One of his hands is around the back of my thigh on the pretense of holding me still while the other scrubs at the broken lines. He leaves the heart that made it through the debacle, but the others are quickly wiped away, and then it’s just Alex kneeling in front of me. His hands slide up my thighs and then back down again, taking my panties with them. 

 

His mouth is on me and I’m grateful when he pushes me back on the counter. My knees were about to give out and there was no way I was going to ask him to stop. The world’s gone crazy and Alex is making love to me with his mouth and hands, and I think how stupid I’ve been to avoid this for so long. 

 

My core shudders and my heart soars and I haven’t felt this good in years. I’m loved. Head to toe, body and soul, and we’re just getting started. 

 

He stands up and reaches behind me, unhooking my bra. Now I’m completely nude and he’s dressed and it’s all pleasantly dirty. Strong, solid Alex and me, legs spread on my bathroom counter with him standing between them. 

 

I shove down his pants but don’t take them off, and then my hands are on him the way his were on me. 

 

He groans appreciatively and pulls me to the edge of the counter, the counter Derek and I picked out together when we redid the bathroom, and I’m really glad they’re close to the same height. I push that thought away as fast as I can. 

 

“Mer?” he asks. 

 

I grab him by the neck to pull him towards me and kiss him as he slides into me. I’ll have to remember to give him crap about that later. That’s a hell of a first kiss. Memorable to say the least. 

 

Alex is one of those people who really lives in his body - it’s not just a package for his mind. It’s him - and as he’s moving in me and with me I remember that I used to be one of those people, too. After that my brain turns off and it’s all me and Alex. Body against body. Skin to skin. 

 

We fuck and make love as we move from the bathroom to the floor of the hallway to his bed. I can’t go into my room with him. I can’t screw him under the picture Derek drew on our wall and I can’t not have him, so we end up in his room. 

 

I’m soaring and at peace all at once. My body responds to his and we sync up as smoothly as we do in surgery. It’s the give and take of understood needs and years of practice. It doesn’t matter that we’ve both mastered these moves on other bodies. This point in time is all that matters as long as we can hold ourselves in it.

 

We move together and time moves forward until we give in to the inevitable and let the moment shatter around us. The groan, the moan, the pulse, the end. 

 

I wait for the horror at what I’ve done to settle it. I never learn. Sex is an appetizer for disaster. It makes the fall greater when it comes, and it always does. 

 

He’s holding me tightly against him, like he knows I’m ready to run, which I am, and he says, “Hell of a first kiss.” 

 

I murmur an indistinct, “Mmhmm,” and he nuzzles my neck. 

 

He rolls on top of me and settles his hips in between mine and a thought occurs to me, one that hadn’t made its way into my mind when Alex forced all coherent thought out. “We skipped the condom.” 

 

He rolls his hips against mine and kisses my neck, clearly trying to start another round of our trip through Sexland. 

 

“Alex. Be a doctor for a minute. We didn’t use a condom.”

 

He looks at me like he’s puzzled by this very basic fact. “I don’t have anything. Do you have something?”

 

“Pregnancy? You’ve heard of it?”

 

“Our fourth kid will show up whenever he decides to show up. He’ll probably be slightly crazier than the other three, but we’ll keep an eye out for that.” He laughs without any humor. “Between us we know all the best psychiatrists in Seattle.” 

 

He says it with the certainty of a physician. The test came back positive for strep. Your arm is broken. Our fourth kid. 

 

I question him as much as I can when I can’t make it past three words. “Our fourth kid?”

 

He rolls off of me and grabs the glass of water from the bedside table. “I know four is a lot, but...” 

 

He looks at me then puts the glass back down without taking a sip and sinks under the covers. He says, “It’s OK. I get it if you don’t want to do the diapers and all that again. I can be happy with three. I am happy with three.”

 

“What was this for you?” I ask. 

 

“A long time coming.”

 

“You’re making jokes? Bragging about your sexual prowess? Now? It’s not like I’ve already forgotten. It was five minutes ago.” I can’t believe that I’ve managed to convince people I’m smart, because at the moment all my thoughts are an incoherent jumble. “What have we done? We just ruined our friendship. This is a mess.”

 

“Catch up, Mer. You just had your last first kiss.”

 

“Who are you to decide that?”

 

“Your second husband.”

 

I smack him with a pillow because of all the ridiculous crap I’ve ever heard come out of his mouth this has to be the biggest bundle of nonsense. “You are not. I’ll never get over Derek.” 

 

“Who asked you to? I’ve got marks all over me from the women I’ve loved. I’m practically held together by scar tissue. But Mer, the sun’s going to rise every morning whether we face it alone or together.”

 

“So you think you should just sleep in my bed now?” I ask. There’s no way I can wake up every morning in my bed with Alex, with anyone, ever. That’s the room where Derek and I fought and loved and conceived our children. I might be able to have a second act to my life, but there are limits to it. 

 

The way he answers gives it all away. He’s thought about this before. While I was wondering and hedging and worrying about ruining our friendship, Alex was waiting me out. Bastard. He’s supposed to talk to me about the big issues, even if I’m the big issue. 

 

He says, “I think the kids should move into the three bedrooms on the second floor. We can take over the rooms in the attic you finished for them. Maggie goes into the office on the first floor.”

 

The world is tilting out from under me and I need to grab onto my person to steady it. Alex is my person. I ask, “That’s what you think we should do?” 

 

“You have a better plan?”

 

I look around his room and I’m depressed by how impersonal it is. He’s never been one for decorating. It’s always been just cheap linens and a bed and dresser, things he doesn’t mind leaving behind when it’s time for him to start over. I say, “If we do this, you have to settle in. Hang a picture or something.”

 

“I don’t decorate.”

 

“I know. That’s why you have to do it. Make it a place you love. A place you won’t leave.” 

 

He promises, “I won’t leave.” 

 

“Do you have any idea how many times you’ve moved out of this house?” 

 

“I bought it, too. And I always come back.” 

 

“If we do this, there’s no more coming back. You’re just staying. That’s it. Out of options. Here until you die.” 

 

“I’m good with that,” he says. 

 

“You might die. People do.” 

 

He shrugs and he’s as fatalistic as I’ve seen him. It’s his old, dry pessimism mixed with a newly acquired ability to accept the inevitable peacefully. I’ll have to get him to teach me that trick.

 

He says, “You can die first, but if we’re looking at history you’re more likely to go crazy.” 

 

“You know I have the Alzhiemer’s gene.” 

 

“Yeah. Sucks. But you know I won’t give up on you when you pee on the couch.” 

 

I hit him with the pillow again because I just don’t know what else to do with him. “You’re going to end up alone with four kids and a crazy wife.” 

 

“I raised two kids with a crazy mom. At least this time I’ll be an adult with money.” 

 

“Alex!” 

 

He refuses to be bothered and gives me his fuck-it-all smile. “If Weber leaves you his share of the hospital and then I get control of all your shares and Derek’s I could threaten the Averys with a hostile takeover. I’ll only back down if they let me hang clown paintings everywhere.” 

 

“You don’t even like clowns!” 

 

“I think when we decorate upstairs I’m gonna hang clown paintings up there, too.” 

 

This entire conversation is ridiculous, and I’m putting a stop to it. I shove him onto his back and straddle him. “No clown paintings.” 

 

“Dogs playing poker?” 

 

“No.” 

 

“Maybe I should get a tattoo of dogs playing poker with clowns.” 

 

“This conversation is making me dumber by the minute.” 

 

Normally he’s hard to shut up when he’s on a roll, but I’ve got a few tricks he hasn’t seen yet. It’ll take time to test them all on him. Apparently we’ve got plenty of it ahead of us.

**Author's Note:**

> Now complete! Enjoy your porn and thanks for all the cheerleading in the comments.


End file.
